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It has been a fairly quiet start to the year for me, as far as pigeon shooting is concerned. Despite seeing massive numbers, true opportunities have been few and far between. On Friday I had a look on one of the farms I picked up last year. I was surprised with how much pigeon damage I found. I had a quick scan of the block of rape fields and chose my spot. I had a pleasant 3 hours or so and shot 20 pigeons. It was nice to see pigeons decoying confidently again. After, I went and looked on a nearby farm that I gained permission on a couple of weeks ago. Another shooter was there so I couldn't really judge the potential. On the way home I popped into a recently drilled field of barley. I had not seen a bird on it the times I looked before. This time I saw around 300. I had planned not shoot on Saturday, as I was sure to be the worse for wear, following a night on the town with my workmates. I asked Jules to phone me on Saturday morning to see how I felt. After around 5 hours sleep on Saturday morning, my phone rang and I answered. I decided to go out and do some shooting. Jules picked me up and we headed for the barley. We found plenty of birds busy pecking away and a few birds coming in, so we set up. We put out 2 floaters, a magnet and a few dead birds. It didn't really get going. After an hour we only had 3 pigeons and a jackdaw in the bag. We packed up and left. I had a field of rape in reserve, that I was certain would produce a few birds. We drove the 15 miles or so to find pigeons aplenty. We hastily got set. We made a hide at the foot of a pylon and put out a magnet and floater. Having shot this area for many years, I knew exactly where the birds would come from. Straight away we had customers. The 32 gm steel 4s were knocking the stuffing out of the pigeons. For the next 3 hours or so we had steady sport. We knocked down a few that we had no right to, along with missing a few sitters. The constant drizzle was a pain, but did nothing to deter the birds. So despite feeling a bit strange all day, I was happy to have picked up a decent bag of pigeons. We finished on a nice 51 pigeons and the single black.